Where has America gone wrong?

[Swede]

40 percent of americans don't give a fuck,whatever bush does is ok with them. . 50 per cent want guns in there pockets, 60 per cent are ok with the death penalty. Where did america go wrong.
The rest of the western world don't want guns,have lost interest in organised religion and have no death penalty.

[amitten]

1. One word: spoiled.

Oh sorry, actually two words are needed: spoiled rotten

[Conservativesux]

2. American's are schizophrenic, paranoid, gun-packing ,deluded fools.....

I still cant look at * and wonder how this POS was elected twice, then I remember that most Red Staters are schizophrenic, paranoid, gun-packing deluded fools, just like shrub.

[pretzel4gore]

3. the yeast and the dough...

really! from the bible. jesus told his followers to be like yeast, and go out among the people to act upon the people, like yeast acts upon dough. Now i know most here will find this far fetched, but the nazipooh revolution has been going on for a long time (regan was selected in 1980) and the repukes were eager to try anything: many gopigs were also xians, or said they were, and they knew about the parable about the yeast and the dough....so, in the interest of power (which then was to be used to edify people to god, supposedly; the riches that the pigs got was just side effect(?)) the nazipoohs set out years ago to, in effect, infect the social order, with their 'greed is the only good philoso...bullshit'. This explains the almost incredible prevalence of rightwing loonies in the media all across the land, including the tiniest towns, and the eerie silence of progressive voices; we've been 'winnowed' or demobilized....example, even dr phill today said, referring to a woman who overcame some handicap to make herself a successful life, that she 'never went on welfare, and burdened society with her greedy demands' etc (btw dr phill himself is a horrendous 'burden' not only on society, but on life itself- he reduces life a dreary set of hassles best cured by '5 in the noggin,' self administered, of course!) The repukes have used the advice of the son of god to promote political tyranny, and that's one more strike against them, imo.... :)

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

4. And 100% of them have the freedom to choose their side on all of those.

I am proud of my fellow americans, and consider Americans to be truly decent at the core for the most part. It is not America or its citizens that have failed, it is the government. The government has failed the people and America, not the other way around.

[BillZBubb]

5. The people INVARIABLY get the government they deserve.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy the Mary Poppins view of Americans. America is at its heart a cruel country-mostly due to indifference and easily avoidable ignorance.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

6. You have the freedom to say that, of course, but don't mind if I disagree

with you 100% and consider it one of the most hateful misguided statements I've ever seen.

Calling americans cruel at heart is one of the hands down most misguided and broad attacking statements I've heard in a longgggggg time.

You have every right to feel that way if it is what you choose, but I feel quite sorry for you.

[area51]

31. Interesting.

I do think it's heartless & cruel to allow people in this country to die due to lack of money to pay for medical care, but that's just me.

[Kickin_Donkey]

34. In this system ...

the government is the American people, and the American peoople are the government.

You've taken civics classes, right? So you should know this.

If the American government has failed, the American people have failed.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Americans have been systematically dumbed down for several decades,

with mass media getting stupider, more trivial, and cruder by the year, the better to become unquestioning consumers of whatever the sponsors want to sell.

Unfortunately, that same mindset is receptive to anything the politicians want to sell.

Meanwhlie, the countervailing forces, such as cultural institutions, unions, schools, mainstream churches, and neighborhood social networks have been weakened or, in some cases, nearly eliminated.

Here's an essay that specifically blames suburbanization for the dumbing down of America, and I think the author has a point:

http://www.newcolonist.com/rr11.html

[moondust]

26. Good article.

I, too, would prefer to live in Europe if I had a real choice!

[pretzel4gore]

30. very good essay!

i suspect that 'social engineers' are dimly perceived by our culture, but that they actively, often at great public expense, scheme in a most brutal and covert way over how they want society to function is a fact that, by design, is ignored by the pigmedia (mass media)....this stuff only seems to comes to public attention when some rightwinger takes offense at the 'secret agenda' they disagree with and blame on 'do gooders' (meanwhile, any agenda that curtails freedom, or imposes a burden on the powerless they are ok with, otoh!)....i recall 2 specific examples of nationwide social engineering that took place outside of (wide) public debate: the plan to addict large numbers to tobacco after it was known that nicotine caused fits,; and the scheme to make the auto the nation's mass transit system, which entailed destroying a widespread cultural affinity for rapid transit (all cities had trains/streetcars etc in old days, and the replacement of these systems was a planned strategy that was not given publicity in the normal news or political debates)...there are many other examples of this: nuclear energy, the war on drugs, especially mara juwanna, the glorification of bullshit history (the child rapist columbus an american icon) and such crap as the 'ad council' or the hollywood agreement to make sure the 'bad guys' got ruined in the movies (and with geebush as presdunce, that idea is obviously nonsense!)
someday, the fact lies (and liars) are the basis of too much of the conventional wisdom used by society will need to be looked at face on, and whether this is ok or not(?)

[cliss]

8. Here's the real reason:

Bush arrived in 2000 as the "Great Equalizer", or the destructive force that will take down Americans a few notches. The main reason is our excessive use of oil. We just can't seem to cut back on our gas guzzling. In fact, we use more each day.

The U.S. burns through 20 million barrels of oil per day. Not gallons, but barrels. Oil is a non-renewable resource. When it's gone, it's gone.

[cantstandbush]

9. Election 2000. The beginning of the end of a great nation. n/t

[ThomWV]

10. The Core Of The Matter Is Education

We have failed to education about two generations in a row. I'm not saying you can't get an education, I'm just saying that if you have even a hint of intellectual laziness in our society you will find yourself going down an educational bowling alley that will treat you just fine.

Unfortunately if you go down that alley FOX will look good to you. You'll start to think golf is exercise. Plastic will become money and you will spend time chatting with people who have absolutely nothing what so ever to say that you have not already said yourself at least three times. Married, two kids, a mortgage that looked like 5x earnings and you get a grown man who's hobby is swilling beer while wearing cowboy hats on weekends at racetracks where half naked 'babes' are as common as born-again evangelicals in the crowd.

[LSK]

11. TV - the brainwash box

When that is allowed to lie to you repeatedly, its over.

[EstimatedProphet]

12. I think it starts a long way back

Back as far as the early 60's, maybe even earlier (maybe even under FDR).

That long ago a core of fascists assembled and actively started trying to direct the media towards new conservatism. They backed Goldwater, and when he failed, they decided to start changing the media to begin to shift the middle ground to the right. Specifically, Scaife, Coors, and several other industrailists were behind the plan.

Our problem is that we thought too highly of the people. We believed that people would see through the propaganda from the right, but we didn't recognize the problem that some people don't want objective information, but instaead want their opinions reinforced, and we also didn't recognize the network for what it was when it was being constructed, and the immense magnifying power it has over the message for people that only get their information from that network. The "mighty Wurlitzer" of the right is nothing short of a brainwashing machine. It's victims lose the ability to think critically, or even understand the difference between facts and opinions.

[lpbk2713]

13. And the rich get richer and the poor get .....

screwed.

[bob4460]

14. it all started nov 22 1963

We did not rise up then because we were too naive OUR GOVERNMENT COULD NOT DO THAT!! Then came the lies of Vietnam OUR GOVERNMENT WOULD NOT LIE!!Then came the war on drugs with all the eroded freedoms OUR GOVERNMENT ONLY DOES WHAT IS BEST FOR US!!Then they realized they could chip away a little at a time so slowly that everyone would not see the lost freedom OUR GOVERNMENT IS THE BEST!!Then came the rampant corpratization of OUR political system OUR GOVERNMENT WOULD NOT DO THAT WOULD THEY ?? And ever sense it has all been down hill,they always are telling us someone or something is killing us,making us look the other way,all the while they are stealing the american dream right from under us. i have a slogan for 2006 ANYONE BUT THE INCUMBENT!!!

[agincourt]

15. The wrong turn was the middle 70s

After the oil companies rigged an oil shortage and created ecomonic malaise, we had two choices either keep feeding the beast and have a phoney democracy, or demand a strong government accountable to us that will keep the bigshot money people in line. We chose the former and our living standards, our foreign policy, our educational system, our press, and many other things have been the poorer ever since. We chose an oligarchy with the election of Ronald Reagen and other republicans. Instead of demanding a government with teeth to keep big business in line. Look at the 2004 election, when Kerry was ahead in the polls stocks went down, when his economic policies were more sound. Why? Too much concentrated wealth lets the bigshots pull the strings. Gas prices were kept down too to lubricate Bush's election. The gap in political power between the rich and the poor makes the poor afraid to rock the boat for the threat of all capital leaving our shores.+

[Lexingtonian]

16. It's all your fault....

See, when immigrants leave their home country, their social/cultural development clock stands still at the moment they leave. They arrive here in the US and resist change, and many pass this on to their children in the form of an ethnic identity. On the eastern and western coasts, the port cities stay in contact with the rest of the world and change rapidly. But there's a 'Heartland' full of people whose social and cultural clocks are stopped at, or only slowly running forward from, southern Britain of 1640 to Calabria and Galicia of 1920, plus some number from the feudal/agrarian southern Vietnam of 1975, the semicolonial agrarian Cuba of 1959, and so on.

I'm only exaggerating slightly. Polycultural/polyracial countries with low levels of real integration and colonial histories are simply not the paragons of social progress. Monocultural/monoracial First World countries tend to be the frontrunners...until they run into problems coping with immigrants and nonnative cultures on their own soil, e.g. the Netherlands recently.

I'm not so convinced that other countries are as done with guns, capital punishment, and organized religion as you imply. My farming relatives in backwoods rural Western Europe rather exactly resemble Red State archetypes- they're pious traditional Christians, hardcore theists, believe in a Devil, are Creationist/anti-Evolution, anti-abortion, anti-gay, clearly racist, pretty xenophobic, anti-Muslim, say certain kinds of criminals deserve to be killed, and like guns. They're just not convinced that they're a majority or persuaded they should dominate their country or Europe- the last attempt by their kind (generically) to do so ended with 2/3 of Europe destroyed in 1945. Their worldview has been dying as generations born prior to the 1950s die out. But there are still a lot of them there, not real visible but e.g. voting for Jean Marie Le Pen in France and the like everywhere else.

So, stepping back a little bit, the U.S. simply has the most complicated and messy society worldwide to bring into Modernity, and it does it in a painfully complicated and painfully messy way. Then again, this also means our full solutions tend correspondingly to be comprehensive and close to universally relevant. We do wash and air our dirty laundry in public, that's a running esthetic difficulty- but it also means that no argument is left untried, no objection or misinterpretation is left unspoken, nor any oblique relevant truth not articulated even if it often gets delivered in the form of a seemingly straightforward lie.

And heavy is the head that bears the crown of 'world leadership'. Americans have not been very comfortable with the concept except for the excuse/escapism/distraction it gave to not deal with the many painful internal issues. In a sense the present conduct of the 'War on Terror' is one such escapism. Conservative Americans are at bottom not actually that fearful of the core 50-100 militant Islamists that make up Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda simply represents a larger world of people closing in on them, via globalization and global television and global airplane flight, who they feel only limitedly able to compete with economically, socially, politically, religiously, ethically, creatively, and as physical creatures. Conservative Americans fear Modernity for what it is, and they also fear and loathe the reactionary backlash to Modernity they realize themselves- and Al Qaeda, and the residual Communists worldwide- part of.

All this shall pass in time. It's an older world dying away and a new one trying to be born, and both things involve much pain, so they must be stretched out.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

18. Lexingtonian, you might be interested in this...

Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy
by Robert Inglehart and Christian Welzel

We are the 'social oddballs' of the world today.

scroll down to the chart on this posting, and see where we land compared to other countries. It's very interesting...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3744557&mesg_id=3744593

[Lexingtonian]

20. very interesting, indeed

I'll have to look into that some more.

Btw, The Economist this week has two articles about capital punishment in the U.S.- how it's on the way out. They wouldn't be the first to reach that conclusion, of course, but their printing it says there's consensus by the experts on both sides and makes it the Conventional Wisdom.

[Lindacooks]

17. American has never, up until now, really seen facism and

dictatorships, unlike almost all of Europe. When you've been under martial law and in the middle of wars, you learn to value freedom. Americans are spoiled rotten. Because they've never had to fight for freedom, they take it for granted and don't think it's that important, which falls right into the laps of the facist neocons.

[Peter Frank]

19. We got complacent...

We like the low prices, as long as we don't assess their costs.

We like "feeling" safe, even if it means not being safe.

We are far too trusting of those in power.

Everything's going to be OK, as long as I have what I need.

...I could easily go on.

[LunaC]

21. The Fundies infiltrated politics

It started with Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition and their efforts to take over local school boards and state government. Once in the political seats of power, they started wielding their influence, shaping school curriculums and local policy to conform to their “values”. The dumbing-down of America started right about then when progressive, liberal, or intellectual thinking was construed as a threat to their way of existence. With Armageddon coming any day now, they adopted a survivalist mentality, big on guns and a determination to protect their little homestead by force. And, of course, the Bible tells them “An eye for an eye” is a perfectly acceptable approach to dealing with the criminal element, hence the death penalty. I lay the fault of our country’s woes squarely at the feet of the Religious Extremists.

[...of J.Temperance]

22. I'm in the 50% who want a gun and I'm in the 60% who support the DP

I own two handguns and a shotgun and I'm a responsible gun owner and want to have the option of defending my life if I feel that my life is in imminent danger from another person who might not be rational. I also support the Death Penalty 100%, life imprisonment for a lot of Capital crimes is just not sufficient enough.

I don't want the Ted Bundy's, John Wayne Gacy's, Tookie Williams', John Nixon's sitting in their cells for decades reading books, writing, watching the TV, listening to the radio...when these monsters have denied that right to their innocent victims, who are now just a bunch of bones turning to dust and therefore cannot even enjoy the most basic qualities that life has to offer considering they're 100% dead long before their time by anothers hand...and I don't believe in the argument that executing monsters will suddenly make their victims jump out of their graves, that's not the point...it's about 100% removing any form of quality of life from the monsters, even removing something as simple as being able to look out of a window at the sun, or watch a cloud go by, or drink a cup of coffee, or go into the exercise yard and breathe in a breath of fresh air.

There's nothing wrong with supporting the ownership of firearms, just as long as it's responsible gun ownership and we're not allowing those who have a violent background or a history of mental illness to be purchasing firearms. We can have responsible gun ownership. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. If one has say a Colt .45 sitting on your kitchen table...the gun on the table is an inanimate object, it's lifeless, therefore it cannot by itself just jump up off the kitchen table and shoot somebody or jump up off the kitchen table, go out and then go on a shooting spree by itself.

Also that Colt .45 in the hand of a rational and responsible person is not going to shoot someone, unless the owner of that gun feels physically threatened and fears that someone is going to put their life in mortal danger.

But that Colt .45 in the hand of someone who has a violent background or a history of mental illness, yes this would cause a dangerous problem. So I support this sort of person from being prevented from purchasing any sort of firearm.

Yes, I agree that there is a lot that has gone wrong with America, but I don't think that the prime examples of what has gone wrong are that 50% of people want to own a gun and that 60% of people support the Death Penalty.

Just sayin'

On Edit: Dammit spelling error.

[blindpig]

23. When we started robbing and murdering the native people.

It's all been of a piece since then. History, read it and weep.

[jokerman93]

24. We lost

We started losing our soul sometime after television marketing came along.

[Jose Diablo]

25. Birth, growth, decline, death, then rebirth

It's a never ending cycle of life. All living things go through this. Our cultures, societies if you will, also emulate the cycles of life.

Rather than a carcase left behind when an animal dies, the country is left in rubble at the end of it's cultural life. The survivors then rebuild to begin the rebirth. Wars are a by product of this cycle and is the destructive force to change the culture. Evolve if you will to a culture that can cope with the new environment.

So what is there in the new environment that is forcing the cultural destruction? I'd say it's the winding down of available energy to fuel the culture.

This time though, rather than than just reducing everything in the dying culture to rubble during the destructive cycle, our weapons of destruction have the power to kill everything on the planet.

We may or may not be able to stop the destructive forces 'internally'. Or if we cannot reign-in these forces, then the rest of the world may have to, if you can.

I don't think the world is such a large place as it used to be. Everything is connected in ways that have never been before. We are stuck in an mid 20th century mindset, with 21st century technology. When faced with an insurmountable problem, like energy (or lack of it), cultures in the past have ratcheted back to an earlier mode of thinking until stability is again reached, but for the world, this spells very bad news.

I don't think WW3 can be avoided at this point. Culturally we need the fuel, but so do you. What Bu$h is signaling is a core mindset in America that states we will survive and do everything to maintain the current 'burn rate' of a dwindling fuel supply, and screw the rest of the world. It's a frontier mindset of overcoming all obstacles to survive, at all costs to the rest of the world.

When people compare the USA to Germany pre-WWII, it's not too far-off the mark. Countries always get the leaders they collectively want. It's just sometimes the leaders they want are different than what they think they want.

Like all people, who we really are is different than who we think we are. I don't think Americans are naive as to fascism, and all it's ramifications. There has always been an authoritarian (a European value system) core as well as the life of freedom (from the American Natives value system). For the most part, we think we are free and at the same time are embracing authoritarian systems of thought, to deal with the problem.


I kind of think of it like this song:

"When my fist clenches
Crack it open
Before I use it
And lose my cool

When I smile
Tell me some bad news
Before I laugh
And act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, Please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, Let me wear your coat

No one knows what it's like,
To be the bad man,
To be the sad man,
Behind Blue Eyes"


People want to be kept warm and cozy by some higher power.

My message to the rest of the world is you shouldn't be too concerned with us here in the states, but rather protect yourselves, because I have my doubts we here is the states can stop what's coming.

[Spider Jerusalem]

27. ...

The bit about guns is nonsense; Canada may be considering a ban on handguns, but try telling hunters they can't have shotguns or rifles. UK? Subject to licencing and restrictions, and dependent on obtaining a firearms certificate, shotguns and small-calibre rifles for target shooting and hunting are legal there, too. Handguns, as well as long arms, are legal (subject to restrictions, of course) for private ownership in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland. You shouldn't make flat assertions on subjects you obviously know nothing about.

And the rest of the Western world haven't so much lost interest in organised religion...they've just gotten a lot more sedate about it since they shipped most of their fanatics over here a few centuries back.

As to the death penalty, well...the US has been rather isolated from the social and political trends in Western Europe that led to its widespread abolition over the past half-century.

[zippy890]

28. whaddya mean gone WRONG!!!!

Who are you some kind of radical commie socialist atheist gay-loving America hater?????

Well so am I.

Its time for a revolution to set things back on track, barring that,
since I am from Massachusetts and since much of the country hates us here I advocate
secession from the U.S. of F*&%$!!ED up A.

:P

[BiggJawn]

29. When their standards for electing a President became....

...whether or not they could "sit down and have a Beer with the guy...".

[SharonAnn]

32. Exactly! And what's funny is that * doesn't drink so you couldn't

sit down and have a beer with him. I mean, you could have a beer but he couldn't. So, what fun would that be?

I couldn't believe that people were talking like that. Don't they want experts doing things that affect their lives? Would you use an auto mechanic to fix your major auto investment if he/she was incompetent just because you could "sit down and have a beer with them"? Or would you use that criteria for your surgeon? Incompetent but a good, beer-drinking buddy?

Don't they realize that the biggest investment they have is their life and well-being, and that of their family, in this United States of America? And that nything that screws up those things damages them seriously, and personally? Having a beer with somebody won't solve that.

[BiggJawn]

33. The amount of disconect in that was amazing.

Yeah, we'd like to sit down and have a beer with a guy who says Billy Graham "saved" him from drinking when his wife told him "Me or the Bottle. Choose".

And THAT'S if you give him the benefit of a doubt and ignore all the innuendo that says he drinks like a fish once the's sequestered.

Saying Bush is a good choice for pResident because he's "drink-worthy" is like saying the guy down at Golden Corral is the one you want doing your triple-bypass because he's so good with that carving knife.